Well intended HR performance appraisal

Hogg, M.A. & Turner, J.C. (1987). Social Identity and Conformity: A Theory of Referent Information Influence. In Doise, W., & Moscovici, S. (Eds.) Current Issues in European Social Psychology, Volume 2. (pp.139-182). New York: Cambridge.

Introduction

Early research into the emergence, persistence and influence of social norms indicates that conformity and norms are closely interrelated. A norm, as a social uniformity, is an emergent product of social interaction which appears to transcend the existence of specific individuals. Conformity is affected by the size, attractiveness, and unanimity of the group. The authors suggest three major sources of influence upon conformity.

Three Major Sources of Influence

The normative clarity and relevance of the group; that is the extent to which the behavior of the group conveys a distinct and reliable group norm which distinguishes it from other groups. The second source of conformity resides in the individual’s relationship to the group, which determines whether he chooses to respond to the group as a source of influence. The third influence on conformity stems from the individual’s relationship to the stimulus. Being in a situation where one would tend to expect a degree of agreement with others concerning the stimulus, or how to behave, and yet encountering disagreement, creates a feeling of subjective uncertainty concerning the objective validity or appropriateness of one’s perceptions, judgements, opinions, or behaviors.

Traditional Model

The traditional model of conformity is a two process dependence formulation, which is considered to explain all variables involved in conformity. It treats people as dependent on each other for social acceptance and approval, and for validation of beliefs, perceptions, and judgements which cannot be tested against physical reality. One limitation of the two process model is that conformity can still occur under conditions in which neither normative nor informational influence would be expected to operate.

Two Approaches

The social identity approach makes a qualitative distinction between group and individual at the level of overt behavior, self-conceptualization and underlying psychological processes, and employs a cognitive definition of the social group as ‘two or more individuals who share a common social identification of themselves or … perceive themselves to be members of the same social category’.

Intragroup consensus, agreement and uniformity are generated by distinct form of social influence responsible for conformity to group norms, called referent informational influence. This occurs in three stages: first, individuals categorize and define themselves as members of a distinct social category or assign themselves a social identity; second, they form or learn the stereotypic norms of that category. Finally, they assign these norms to themselves and thus their behavior becomes more normative as their category membership becomes salient.

Empirical Studies

The authors lend empirical weight to referent informational theory through several experiments. Taken together, they show that conformity represents private acceptance of a norm which defines or is stereotypic of a group with which the individual identifies on the basis of explicit categorization, or implicit categorization based on self-inclusion in the group’s response distribution. Conformity appears to represent true change rather than behavioral compliance, because it persists in the absence of surveillance by the group or feedback of the group’s responses. Group polarization is the tendency for individuals’ attitudes, judgements, decisions, etc. to shift, following group discussion, in the direction already favored by the group so that the post-discussion consensus is more extreme than the mean of the individual pretest responses.

Conclusion

The research described in this chapter represents a gradual accumulation of evidence favoring referent informational influence theory as an explanation of conformity. Identification seems to be an important precondition for conformity, as is the existence of a distinct ingroup norm. Although referent informational influence theory still needs to accumulate more empirical support to swell its data base, this deficiency is not due to the accretion of antagonistic findings. Rather, it is simply that there are, to date, only a relatively small number of studies which have systematically put the theory to the test.